The interview with Su Jun was completed in two parts, the first hour sat in the car that the Zhimi team was about to release, the model and name of the new car have not yet been finalized, and the second half is in his office. In the early spring of Beijing, when it was warm and cold, he was full of passion, with light in his eyes, and seemed to be carrying a living fire in his arms.
This is his second venture, in 2014, when he was the head of the department of North China University of Technology, he was invited to found Zhimi Technology and served as the CEO. As a Xiaomi ecological chain company, Smartmi Technology has created a number of popular products such as air purifiers and full DC inverter air conditioners.
The direction of this venture is automobiles, which is still a popular product methodology. For the automotive industry, Su Jun believes that the energy revolution has brought about a "dimensionality reduction impact", and the path of "super product manager" has begun to become possible, just as the mobile Internet and consumer electronics industry have seen.
Two factors have promoted the "dimensionality reduction impact": one is production automation, and the other is the high integration of components. These two factors reinforce each other and are dynamically coupled. In the new industrial environment, the weights of different factors have changed, and allocating resources around the "super product manager" has become the most preferred.
The debut of "super product managers" is a significant feature of the automotive industry in the new energy era: Li Xiang of Li Auto, Li Bin of NIO, and He Xiaopeng of Xiaopeng Motors are all "super product managers" in the automotive industry, rather than "bosses, managers, and managers" in the traditional sense.
Xiaomi SU7 was launched, and the relationship between the smart mi team and Xiaomi Auto has sparked speculation. On March 16th, the smart mi team officially announced: the smart mi team has no equity relationship with smart mi technology and Xiaomi Group, the smart mi team is cooperating with the brand iCAR of Chery Group, and the team will be independent of Chery Group after the integration, and the smart mi entrepreneurial team is an entrepreneurial project started by Su Jun's personal entrepreneurial team.
Su Jun said that the new Zhimi team is an entrepreneurial project, and iCAR is an entrepreneurial team within Zhimi Chery Group, and the new entrepreneurial team formed after the merger of the two is a "new force" of Chery's car manufacturing.
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Crossover: Discover the "Super Product Manager"
Su Jun has loved cars since he was a child and insisted on subscribing to "China Auto Pictorial". There is a cover report on the founder of Chery, Yin Tongyue, which is the first time he "meets" Yin Tongyue, and the entrepreneurial story of Chery and Yin Tongyue deeply attracted him. What he didn't expect was that many years later, he would be able to meet Yin Tongyue face-to-face and talk about the future of the automotive industry.
In the past six months, Su Jun and Yin Tongyue, the Zhimi entrepreneurial team and the Chery iCAR team have held several rounds of talks, and finally finalized the integration details. The Zhimi entrepreneurial team is responsible for product definition, strategy, market, brand, as well as informatization and intelligent system, and reuses Chery's production, supply chain, and channel capabilities, which is a typical cooperation model of "Internet team integration into automobiles".
In terms of team configuration, it is also a typical "Internet + car" model. In the fusion team, Su Jun served as the chief product officer of the iCAR brand, Zhang Tianli served as the design director of the iCAR brand, and was responsible for styling in Volvo, Mercedes-Benz and other OEMs, Ma Yongdong served as CTO and president of the iCAR brand research institute, with a background in R&D and engineering development of SAIC and Pan Asia, and was also the person in charge of the Chery Auto Special Energy platform; Cui Zhuojia served as CMO and deputy general manager of iCAR marketing, and was responsible for the tank brand marketing of Infiniti and Great Wall Motor. The formation of the fusion team draws on the experience of all parties to attract outstanding people in various fields, and outstanding people have a large number of followers, bringing people to join with guns.
The first product of the iCAR brand, iCAR 03, will be available for global pre-sale on December 18, 2023, and the first pure electric product iCAR 03 has been on the market for only one month, and has achieved sales of 5,487 units in March, accumulating a certain user base and brand influence.
The new car-making forces have verified the success of the "Internet + Automobile" cross-border model, and the core of "Internet + Automobile" is the "super product manager". Previously, there were two industries dominated by super product managers, one was the Internet industry, and the other was the consumer electronics industry. When the industry evolves to the stage of electrification, intelligence, and networking, it will enter the super product manager stage, which is the reason why the "super product manager" is the first to appear in the Internet and consumer electronics fields.
Su Jun belongs to both the Internet industry and the consumer electronics industry, "super product manager", Su Jun has been successful in many products, such as smart meter technology's products air purifier, full DC inverter air conditioner, smart toilet seat, etc.
Li Xiang's success in the automotive field proves the possibility of "super product manager" thinking in the automotive industry, which is entering the stage of electrification, intelligence and networking, which is the background of the "super product manager" and the cross-border car manufacturing of Chery Group and Zhimi's entrepreneurial team.
iCAR appointed Su Jun as chief product officer, the first time Chery has such a title. At the iCAR brand night, Yin Tongyue proposed that iCAR is Chery's "new special zone", and the group will spare no effort to support the development of iCAR, and there is no upper limit on investment, helping iCAR enter the first camp of new energy.
This means that Chery's product strategy, which has been following and optimizing for nearly 30 years, will be completely overturned. In the "Super Product Manager Era", Chery wants to do disruptive innovation, not micro-innovation.
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Geeks: A group of people who are crazy about technology
Su Jun said that at present, there are a large number of models that only sell dozens or hundreds of units a month, and the investment in developing a new car is huge, which is a huge waste of social resources. In the face of Tesla's "single explosive product" play, China's automotive industry must not only make up for the technical lessons, but also make up for the thinking lessons.
The "long tail phenomenon" has also appeared in the mobile phone industry and the home appliance industry, and the mobile phone industry in the era of feature phones is popular with "having more children and fighting", typical of which is Nokia, which launches hundreds of new machines every year, some of which sell well, and some of which cannot be sold at all.
The advent of Apple's mobile phone has changed this situation, with only a few phones launched a year, each selling tens of millions of dollars, and in China, Huawei, OPPO, and VIVO have also followed this strategy, and the pattern of the mobile phone industry has changed.
Su Jun in the home appliance industry participated in the history,2014In 2014, when Zhimi entered the air purifier and air conditioning industry, Midea and Gree were the industry leaders, and Zhimi Technology tore up a gap, on what basis? The routine is the same as Apple, Tesla, and it is based on the "single explosive product" way of playing.
Behind the "single explosive product" stands a group of geeks, who have a crazy love for cool and fun things created by technology, and combine this love with work, combining the love of play with the seriousness of work. Zhimi Auto is the work of such a group of geeks.
The so-called "single explosive product" is a set of core logic, that is, the geek team deeply understands the user, focuses on subtraction, focuses on the core value of the user, and then finally assumes the principle of success and reverses the price.
Because of the good reputation, the product has a continuous and large number of self-propagation, and then produces fission, and finally forms a popular model. Explosive models bring traffic, and traffic can give birth to the generation of another popular model.
Su Jun said that this is the era of geeks, and their unique cognition has a strong resonance with the spirit of the technological era, which makes Chinese manufacturing to Chinese design, and Chinese brands have the ambition to build a world reputation.
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Explosive product: the power of "class crossing".
In the era of electrification, intelligence and networking, the supply side and the demand side will change, and new phenomena such as "super product manager" and "integrated intelligent production" have appeared on the supply side, and new phenomena such as "explosive products" and "scientific and technological equality + aesthetic consumption" will also appear on the demand side.
At the brand night, Zhang Hongyu, general manager of the iCAR brand division, said that iCAR's future products will definitely be able to make friends and be very competitive, which is a great challenge in the era of new energy involution. The secret lies in the popular methodology of "single, high-quality, massive, and long-term." ”。
The basis of this theory lies in the high-quality product, that is, the geek team deeply understands the user, grasps the core needs of the user, and transfers the user's concern for price to value. During the Beijing Auto Show, Su Jun also revealed more product details of the future iCAR brand to everyone at the press conference, the principle is high performance, high appearance, low price, beyond consumer expectations, let users scream.
Isn't there a very familiar taste? That is, the pursuit of "high performance, high value, high value", the integration of "science and technology equality + consumer aesthetics".
Products integrating "consumer aesthetics + technology equality" must have the following three points: basic ability is not lower than or even slightly higher than the industry average, attention to detail, delicacy, stunning appearance, and ultimate cost performance. Among them, the ultimate cost performance is the explosion point and high point that make users scream.
As Su Jun said, to make a classic, durable, and time-traveling car, so that everyone can enjoy the fun of "exquisite" technology.
In the era of brand consumption, "brand unlimited premium", luxury goods can be several times, dozens of times premium, typical such as Moutai, the cost is about 100 yuan, the retail price is 1499 yuan, and the consumer price is 3000 yuan. In the era of technological equality, more than 5% of people pay for the "limited premium of brands", and more than 10% are not recognized.
At present, in the field of electric vehicles, China's BYD is far ahead in global production and sales, and the long board is in the use value and tool attributes, and the short board is in the emotional value and toys and props attributes. Other domestic electric vehicles are not doing enough in terms of extreme cost performance.
The iCAR V23, the team's first product after integration, has the triple attributes of "tools, props, and toys", and meets both use value and emotional value. Su Jun said that these products, with these three attributes of the product has a characteristic, with the power of crossing the class, it will become a hit, and in the economy, it is reflected in scale and efficiency.
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Taste: the first car for young people
For a product to be successful, it must find the right market positioning, and iCAR is positioned as "the first car for young people", which is the largest market in China.
Scale is very important, it must be positioned in a super-large-scale market, and products priced within 100,000 yuan can be profitable. According to the logic of "dimensionality reduction", scale and efficiency are the goals pursued by the Zhimi entrepreneurial team.
According to the data released by Chery Group, the annual sales of automobiles in 2023 will exceed 1.88 million units, the annual revenue will exceed 300 billion yuan for the first time, and the total number of global car users of Chery Group will exceed 13 million. With the help of Chery channels, the Zhimi entrepreneurial team can quickly popularize the "first car for young people".
Su Jun believes that any product contains use value and emotional value, "science and technology equality" to meet the use value, belongs to the tool appeal, "consumer aesthetics" to meet the emotional value, the product must have "taste", value proposition, personality, not low, not price, belongs to the "props, toys attributes".
"iCAR firmly focuses on the core values of young people, and makes the best looking, best and fun cars for young people," said Su Jun.
The biggest outlet of an era is the definition of a new way of life, and the automobile has been defining the car lifestyle of different eras and different classes for a hundred years: British and German cars have exported the "powerful" car lifestyle, and the United States and Japan have exported the "family" car lifestyle.
"Young people's first car" exports the car life of young people, that is, the "personal" car lifestyle. In the future, the automobile liberates everyone, the trend of social development is atomization, and the "individual" car lifestyle is centered on the "individual (social atom)", which is what the future society will look like.